Moon Mining: A Compromise [HiSec]

Industry Gameplay Center Mining & Extraction
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Heyo.

When I returned to EVE in August of 2019, I was coming back from a year and a half break. Looking for something to do, I discovered the changes to moon mining, and decided to see what sort of content this was. I very quickly realized that moons were an emergent content factory. To make a long story short: I added 4 accounts, bringing my total up to 7, with plans for more. Why so many accounts? Because I discovered that the best way to generate content at moons was simply: to mine as much of the ore as possible while the station owners were around.

I spent many, many hours glued to my computer screen, actively engaged with EVE Online. These hours were spent, yes, krabbing it up and mining ABCs in HiSec, but also engaged in “wars” with station owners which included such activities as basic bumping and ganking, suspect flag $&%*ery, and theft. When it was all said and done I’d acquired almost 40 billion ISK of compressed moon rocks, and stolen structures, faction mining drones, faction mining modules, and other assorted items. Not to mention the fathomless amount of fun I had.

Then CCP nerfed moon mining into the dirt, and immediately the systems that had been full of people became empty, the structures vanished, and all the content vanished. I unsubbed accounts, eventually became bored, and took another hiatus from EVE.

We are now in 2021… coming up on a year since the nerf.

CCP always tends to overdo things. They overdo implementation and they overdo “correction” or balancing. They over buff, over nerf.

I think moon mining was a great addition to the ecosystem of HiSec

  1. People were building, buying, and blowing up structures (Athanors).
  2. People were building, buying, and burning a resource (fuel).
  3. People, who otherwise would have been dispersed throughout a region, playing alone, had come together and were participating in various in-game channels and Discord servers to coordinate mining and defense.
  4. People like me got to enjoy a veritable shooting gallery of content.

The thing with EVE is this: If it’s profitable, people will do it. When people do it, they undock. When people undock, there is content to be made.

Nerfing moon mining made it no longer profitable and people stopped doing it. Content vanished. Players left.

As someone who enjoys both carebearing and ‘content creation’ ( :wink: ) I think there was a better solution, a sort of middle ground. Very simple, and I speak from a HiSec perspective but there’s no reason similar mechanics can’t be implement elsewhere:

  1. Keep moon mining in 0.5 and below.
  2. Return region appropriate ores to HiSec moons, but allow a range from standard yield to the 15% variety.
  3. Reduce, but not eliminate, the LS and NS ores available from HiSec moons and restrict them to standard yield.
  4. Perhaps implement randomness (and a station module to improve the chances) to whether or not LS or NS ores spawn from the HiSec moons which contain them.
  5. Since moon mining is an ‘end game’ sort of mining activity, implement rat spawns that are much more dangerous than the local belt rats. Perhaps a couple of diamonds with non-diamond support wings or w/e. Nothing an organized gang couldn’t deal with, but something that AFK Orcas would die to.

I think this is a solid compromise position that will bring moon mining (and content) back to HiSec, making it more appealing than belt mining, but not so overpowered that it breaks the economy and empties the belts of miners completely.

TY.

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Moons are made of specific material. It would make no sense to have the ability to randomize what ore comes out of a moon.

Their stance of trying to starve the production and economy to get “better ideas” of mining amounts, production amounts and economic impact probably should have concluded a while ago.
They have access to literally every bit of detail relating to harvesting and production, even without the starvation phase.
It was a lackluster explanation from the beginning, imo.

So they don’t like people stockpiling big ships, but they want to keep nerfing big ships as well.
By doing so, they’re spitting at everyone that has skilled into big ships.
The skill books cost isk, the skill points take a lot of time, and the ships cost isk.
Lowering the reward for all that is dumb. Plain dumb. No incentive to grow or expand.

Building empires takes isk and resources. Alliance/coalition war can’t be sustained without isk and resources.
They’re effectively killing large wars. After this shill show between goons and test, there probably will never be another large scale war again.
Oh but limiting resources means you have to fight for more!
No it doesn’t. It means you have to buy plex and use the isk from that to get the ore you’re not getting from your highsec alts.
Moon mining has been thrown away. The rock doesn’t hold a lot of value, and t2 production is more limited by the t1 production.
Prices have risen some, and as stockpiles run out will rise even more. New players are cut out of competitive gameplay unless the buy plex.
They won’t buy plex if the game is prohibitively cost inefficient and requires more and more time, or more and more real money.
Whether they see it or not, they’re gutting eve. Players are holding on because of some vague hope of nostalgia that will never be realized.

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Sure it does, since the distribution is unlikely to be uniform. Ores run in veins and accumulate in deposits. You won’t always pull the same ores or the same (yield) variants.

I agree. EVE is currently deep in the middle of an identity crisis.

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Unfortunately calculating different ore from a moon pull isn’t really within eve currently. It would be interesting to see.
The only problem I see with that is when you set your drill timer, that random chance would have to be calculated. If it doesn’t come up with what you want, just reset the drill until it does.
It’s not like it costs anything to reset the drill.
Of course, given that they want to limit specific types of ore to certain regions, you’re almost always going to pull the same stuff. I suppose the variations could be what you’re looking for though?

I’d rather they just stick the old ore back into moons. It’s really not worth the billions in investment, and the risk of owning a station to your corp. Even if you use a holding corp, eventually it’ll be wardecced and you lose your station.
With current ore, it takes at least a year to even come close to repaying the investment. It’s unlikely to last that long though.
The moon mining wasn’t really the problem. It was the massive anoms with rocks so big a rorq would be mining it for 2-3 hours.
They fixed that, then went three steps further and ruined moon mining, took out most belt mining in null. Few exceptions, apparently.
I’ve traveled around in null quite a bit and haven’t found ore in the belts, but people on the forum claim it’s there. Somewhere. Haven’t really gone to npc null, so maybe there?

Like biden will do soon, ccp killed small business. It’s either make tons of alts, buy plex to turn around and buy ore (killing your profit margins) or don’t mine.

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I don’t understand this response. Mining ore at moons wasn’t a thing, and then it was.

So don’t show it to the players until the chunk pops?

What? I made like 30 bil in a few weeks.

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Mining moons in the first place took a lot of coding. Changing it to have a % chance at producing x,y,z would take a rework of the entire system and any related subsystems.

I suppose not showing what you’ll get would work, but I don’t see anyone being happy with that system.
You should be calculating potential profit per drill timer. Without that ability, it’s a shot in the dark. Set it for a week, or 2 months v0v
Your potential profit is entirely up in the air.

30 bil in a few weeks off 1 drill? Assuming you reprocess at max skills, at 1 week pops, you’re only looking at maybe 300 million. Assuming you suck up every last cycle for the available rocks.
If you’re not reprocessing, which is the only real value, you’re looking at somewhere around 250 million a week. Also assuming you harvest every last cycle of rock available.
That may fluctuate depending on which moon ore you get, but raw moon ore is cheap. Unless something has changed a whole lot in the 2 1/2 weeks since I mined moon rock.
You have to take into account the structure, the core, rigs and modules, and fuel. The fuel adds up when we’re talking multiple month pulls.
I was slightly exaggerating on the year to repay it, but I’m not exaggerating on how much risk you take on by holding stations in highsec.

I could Maybe see that if they were on 2 month cycles, and you were mining multiple moons, with a lot of alts, and they happened to pop over the last 3 weeks.
Mind you, I mine on 46 characters, and I mine 12+ hours a day and I’m only making 25-30b a month. Well, on 30 characters, the other 16 are only a week old and I can’t measure monthly profit yet. They’re in procurers already, but don’t have max yield skills yet.
I’m sure I could measure it by doing math, but I’m on my phone laying in bed, so the math will have to wait.

  • Edit; I made another 20 mining alts today, but had stuff to do, so they’re not yet in my corp.
    Feel free to look up my alts corp, Independent Contractor LLC
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Did you mine moons prenerf?

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Yes.
I also mined them in null just a couple weeks ago, before I brought all my miners back to highsec.

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Okay well this was just a couple of weeks with 4 low skilled miners and 2 Orcas.

Mining
Mining646×683 148 KB

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Not recently and if it was, it wasnt in highsec.

Moon ore has changed. There are no abc’s, no regular ore, and certainly not 6k compressed ice.
It’s low value, high volume goo that reprocesses into reaction material.

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Clary, I invite you to reread my original post and then put everything into context… You seem to be responding in a contrary fashion for the sake of being contrarian.

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I don’t fully disagree with your original post. I think some of the points are silly and prohibitive for average highsec miners.
Especially ones that are solo and don’t have a bunch of alts to take care of elite spawns.
My major disagreement is with some posts in the resulting conversation.
Your recent claims of mining 30b in a few weeks is impossible with the changes that happened last year.
Moon ore is low value and high volume. Your evidence illustrates that your claim is impossible, as it is high amounts of ore you can’t get in highsec due to the changes you mention previously.
Simply put, the ore you illustrate holds more value than any highsec ore, even the variations. That’s With the market valuing them higher due to supply and demand.

For any suggestions for improvement to be taken seriously, the conversation needs to be truthful and clear.
I’m pointing out the flaws I see, which would shoot down the suggested changes. I Want changes to moon mining, and I’m (Im)patiently waiting for them to make the switch from starvation/scarcity to whatever it is they’re planning next.

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… the 30b was mined before the changes, as evidenced by the ore types present in my screenshot.

… this is why I asked you if the numbers you cited were from before or after the nerfs.

I think your problem is that you’re too quick to jump to assumptions. You should be more careful with that.

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You didn’t ask if the numbers I cited were prior to changes. You just asked if I moon mined prior to the changes.
I did. And I mine now.

I’m not psychic, I can’t extrapolate what you mean by your text. I can only answer your text.
I think in some things we agree, in others there might be miscommunication.

To be more to the point of the original post;

I think applying a chance modifier to moons that are entirely made of certain materials would pose problems, and not make sense.
When you scan a moon, it tells you what the moon is made of. That is all you can get out of it.

I agree, moons should be 0.5 and lower only. Or at least very crappy output in anything higher. Due primarily to the empires probably doing their own mining?

Yes, I agree. Return region specific ore to moons. Honestly I’d prefer if all the ore was brought back. With the changes to null, ls and wh, players are abandoning them and coming back to highsec in droves. Either fix those places, or make highsec worth the increased mining. After all, highsec miners are protecting the empires and building the entire economy for players.

I do not think elite spawns on moons would even make sense. The pirates don’t seem to care who they kill or where, so wouldn’t necessarily stick their best on moon belts.
Besides that, it would essentially prohibit new players and alpha players from mining the rocks they have skills for. Not necessarily a terrible idea, but we want player rentention, not to put another obstacle in their way.
It’s hard to get people to spend money on a video game, especially during such a financially unstable time.

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Are you dumb?

We’re talking about moon mining. You cited numbers.

Why would you cite any numbers other than what you make moon mining?

Forget it - you’re clearly here just to be a pest. I’m putting you on ignore. Take care.

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Again, you didn’t ask if the numbers I cited were from prior to the moon mining changes.
I’m so dumb that you linked ore from prior to the moon changes as evidence of recent moon mining profits.
You have no argument, your ideas are folly, and when you can’t come up with anything you resort to insults and block.
Extremely petty, and doesn’t have the effect you think it does. Now everyone can see how unequipped you are to handle your own ideas.

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If they have the dps to kill afk orca’s they would most definitely kill T1 mining frigates and barges very easily which would make it not friendly to alpha players.

I tried to look at that corp but it was empty.

That really depends on how they’ve coded it in the first place, because it could be as simple as throwing in one method that would throw a class randomizer in there to identify which ore would be selected per drill cycle and then calling that method every time a drill cycle is started. As I said though, that really depends on how they’ve coded it, as it could be even more complex.

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This is incorrect.

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